


we are too shallow and too brave

by catarinquar



Series: series 01 [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s07e07 Orison, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, as in not depicted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catarinquar/pseuds/catarinquar
Summary: Pfaster broke the mirror with her, and he broke her skin with the mirror, and he yanked at her ankle and wrenched her shoulders and squeezed her windpipe and bound her wrists and bruised her hips and her thighs. But she's still here and whole and alive and that bastard isn’t.-post-orison. the first night and a trial run of falling apart.





	we are too shallow and too brave

They’re in his car, on their way away from her apartment but not quite on their way to his yet. No, she doesn’t want to go to her mother’s and have her see her like this. And what hotel exactly would he suggest? His place, then - sure, whatever.

“This is my fault, Scully.”

“Don’t.”

“No, if I had just done my fucking job properly, this would never -”

“‘s not your fault. It’s not about you.”

He didn’t ask her a question, and she didn’t give him an answer. They’re statements, facts, two dissonant truths.

She carries her bag up herself and he unlocks the door. She showers and he waits fifteen, twenty minutes, half an hour, an hour. He’s worried so he doesn't check on her before then. When he knocks on the door he hears the water shut off and he doesn't hear her cry.

“I’m heating up some soup,” he tells her through the wood. Statement, fact. Offer; take it or leave it - but please, take it.

He heats up soup. He brings two bowls of soup to the couch where she's curled up in fresh silk pajamas. He eats a bowl of scalding soup while she closes her eyes and doesn’t sleep.

-

“I’m going to call your mom.” A request for permission masquerading as another statement, and her drifty eyes play along as she wordlessly inquires as to why. So, this is still his Scully who has to know all the variables before she makes up her mind, and he’s thankful. “By tomorrow morning at the latest it’ll be all over the news and I don't think she should wake up to headlines about a female FBI agent being assaulted in her own home by an escaped necrophiliac serial killer.”

It's harsh, maybe, to put it that way to her of all people, but he knows - better than her, possibly - how many painkillers they put in her. He has to hit a little too hard just to get a response.

She nods and retreats to his bedroom, closing the door behind her.

He loses his cool through three rings and a sleepy “hello”, and then tells Mrs. Scully a sort of version of events; that Scully is in one piece and alive; she’s with him now, yeah, but asleep in the bed; he'll be riding the couch, of course, of course, so. His has always been the role of the bringer of bad news, but he silently praises Mrs. Scully and her Catholic God for her patience and calm.

“How is Dana now?” she finally asks.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Mrs. Scully… they put her on some strong painkillers, and, uh… she’s going to pull through this, but it - it’s going to take time, this one.”

He feels like he’s infringing, just a bit, telling Mrs. Scully how certain things are going to affect her daughter; how she’s going to handle things. He’s glad Mrs. Scully isn’t here to have to handle how her daughter handles things. They politely wind down and he promises to make Scully call her tomorrow.

He really did intend to sleep on the couch, but when he goes to check on Scully the first thing she does is ask him to stay, and the second thing she does when he’s in pajama pants and on the bed - _on_ the bed - is to drag him closer. She doesn’t let go of his hand and her damp hair smells of his shampoo. It makes him both angry and touched.

-

At some point she flies up beside him, eyes wild and superficial breaths hissing between her teeth, and he traces soothing patterns on her back over her sweat-damp pajamas until he realises that it is, in fact, blood-soaked.

She sheds the shirt without hesitation at his request, no-nonsense these Scully-women, but bunches it up in front of her between her chest and drawn-up knees.

They have been kissing some and some more since New Year’s, but the closest to naked he’s seen her she was still wearing jeans and a bra. Those two times, what, six years ago now - it was unzipped jeans and bunched up skirts only. Besides which, alien spaceships and decontamination showers don’t count, he’s come to think; those instances don’t hold a candle to the fully clothed but flushed and panting, all-bedroom eyes Scully that he's come to know in the past weeks.

“Paramedics didn’t fix you up?” he asks as he takes in the weeping cuts and aggressive violet bruises. Her entire back is covered in them, and they’re all covered in blood-smears. The scale is tipping towards angry.

“Mmh-no. Fed me some painkillers.” She still winces when he carefully touches the edge of a deeper gash running over her right shoulder blade. It’ll be a miracle if she's able to move around at all tomorrow. “Think… they were more - ah, _shit_ \- concerned about other things.”

“Sorry. I’ll just get some things,” he mumbles and rises from the bed. They would be, of course, more concerned about other things. He rummages through the bathroom cupboards for clean towels and an antiseptic cream or something, just fucking - something. He slams the drawer closed, wets a towel. His bathroom light is not kind and the mirror is unforgiving.

Missing time and the backseat of crashed cars and six-year-old implications. She’s put the shirt on backwards when he gets back.

He settles on his knees behind her, gently cleaning her back with the wet towel. “Was there - should they… was there any reason, for them to be concerned - ”

“Mmh-no,” she says, and then more firmly, “no. I have bruises. On my hips and, ah…” they can both pretend it’s the water or ointment that stings her, “my inner thighs. But I wasn’t - unconscious, at any point, and he didn’t. He didn’t do.”

Didn’t do, full stop. Do, do, do. What’d he do; take a look, cop a feel. What he did and what he got - yes, what he did was get shot. Scully shot and killed the fuckhead.

“Okay,” he says when she starts fretting. “‘s okay. Look, I’m not sure you’ll want this stuff on your fancy pj’s so I’ll just get you an old t-shirt.” He averts his eyes at least a little when she discards the luxurious silk to pull his old cotton over her head with a muffled _thanks,_ but then she tugs at his hand until they both end up under the covers, and then, then, then - she curls up with her head under his chin, breathing a warm spot right over his heart.

He’s balancing out again; flying, soaring towards touched, loved, loving.

-

She whispers into his t-shirt, “he threw me into the mirror.”

“Oh, Scully.” That’s anger.

“Four, five times I think.”

He kisses her hair and wraps his arms fully around her, because that’s the only way he’s going to not break something, not hurt someone; is if she’s here and he has to be careful for her sake. Not because she’s fragile and breakable, but because she’s so goddamn tiny and vulnerable at times like this; that when she _lets_ herself be vulnerable in his company, he’s damn well going to take care of her.

She guides his right hand - the one that’s not attached to an arm trapped underneath her - to her neck. “He tried to strangle me.” Grasps it between her own two hands with their raw knuckles and rope burns. “He bound my hands. And my feet.” He can feel her wriggle her legs underneath the blanket as she holds their clasped hands up in front of her mouth next; kisses his. “He gagged me.” To her hip, “he shoved me to the floor,” and to those bruised inner thighs where she’s suddenly all naked warm skin, no pajama pants, “and pinned me down.”

So she just holds their hands there for a while, and maybe it's because Pfaster didn't _do_ and maybe it's not. He kisses her forehead this time, then the bridge of her nose. They're going to get through this in increments.

Then she drags his hand up, just under the oversized and overwashed t-shirt, and he can feel small puckered cuts there, too. “I crawled on my stomach over the floor. Under the bed.” Up to her ribs, then, and it's not hard to imagine the discolouration there now that he's seen her back. “All to get my gun. And then you came, and I still shot him. I killed him.”

He doesn't say, _no, you didn't._ He says, _yes, and it was right._ He kisses her mouth.

-

Her side - _really?_ \- of the bed is empty when he wakes next, but not yet completely cold, so. Her pajamas and panties and her t-shirt - his t-shirt, whatever - are lying on the floor exactly where they landed during the night, so. And, and, and - there’s a thin stripe of light coming from beneath the bathroom door, _so._

But when he doesn’t hear any sounds for a few minutes - at least he hopes it's minutes and not just seconds; it's not that he believes she _would_ do anything; she didn’t yesterday; he just, he just, he just - he jumps up and only at the last second stops to put on a pair of boxers before he knocks on the door, and then there it is, a careful little “come in”.

 _Come in,_ as if it wasn't his bathroom, but of course, it also only was his t-shirt until it wasn't. Everything, everything, everything would belong to her, if only she wanted it.

Forgiveness, he thinks.

So there she is, in his bathroom but in her own clothes; back in the armour and war paint, hiding - with little success - the last bruises; the last little chinks that say, _Very Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, MD_ _is not unbreakable_.

Not that she's broken, no. They ascertained that last night. Pfaster broke the mirror with her, and he broke her skin with the mirror, and he yanked at her ankle and wrenched her shoulders and squeezed her windpipe and bound her wrists and bruised her hips and her thighs. But she's still here and whole and alive and that bastard isn’t. As a matter of fact, Special Agent Dana Scully with the FBI looks about ready to return to her regular schedule of saving the world and shining a light on one spooky monster at a time.

“You're not going into work today,” he says, only registering it when it’s halfway out. Statement, question, statement, question, request; he’s lost track.

“No,” she says, drawing the word out until it gets the connotation of _of course I’m not, you idiot._ She’s wearing the standard facial expression of mascara application and it isn’t helping. “However I do have to go down and deliver my statement as I didn't get around to that yesterday.”

Didn't get around to it because he practically carried her out of her apartment, of course; she turned somewhat unresponsive on their way past the brownish-red puddle in the living room. For both their sakes there’s really no reason to bring that up, though. He wonders instead what happened between needy, salty kisses; and fevered skin crushed to fevered skin; and her biting down on his shoulder as if her shaking didn’t already hit his natural frequency; and her last angry, strangled sobs - and then now. If _let’s pretend it didn’t happen_ is what she wants, it’s hers. Everything -

“Oh. ‘s there anything I can do? Want me to drive you?”

“Mmh-no, I'll be fine,” she says, dabbing something on her split lip, then frowns. “Although if you could drop me off at my apartment so I can get my own car, that would be nice. If it's not too much trouble, of course.”

He refrains from commenting on - well, _that,_ too.

“Sure. You want breakfast?”

“Just coffee, please.”

He's about to ask her, _please,_  to eat some of the plain yoghurt and fresh fruit and bee pollen he’s started buying on the regular just in case she’s ever over and interested at a time where it isn’t yet expired - or worse yet, mutated - but reconsiders. It would be saying too much; things she doesn't want to hear, least of all now. Coffee for two and burnt toast for one sounds just great, too.

It's not like she's ever actually been anorexic, as far as he knows. There was a time during her cancer where he’d thought she was - or bulimic, anyway - until he realised it was the chemo making her sick as all hell. In the end he’d pulled the Senior Agent Card and told her to stay home for at least a day after her treatments. She did, though she took the paperwork with her. For now, he’s sure she’ll eat later when she feels up for it.

When she comes out from the bathroom five minutes later, her face is completely free of makeup again, though the suit is impeccable as always.

-

There's a reason she wears makeup. She's the most beautiful woman to him - and more than beautiful enough in the eyes of even the most tasteless men, he’s sure - but there's a reason she still wears makeup.

So, he realises when they’re back in the car, there's also a reason she removed it all now but kept the suit. Keeping the balance between _look at what he did to me and tell me you wouldn't have shot him_ and _I’m a professional agent who did what I had to do and nothing more._  The statement she's about to deliver, the sick leave Skinner has enforced, the OPR hearing - they’re all formalities; no one's going to convict her and she knows it.

Dressing up for herself, then. He wonders if she'll go to confession and then wonders how different whatever the hell they did last night was - in concept, at least.

When they park in front of her building she looks up at her apartment’s bay window for a few long seconds before she gets out.

“See you,” she says. Later, tomorrow, never. He doesn't know just then, but her pajamas and goddamn panties are still lying on the floor of his bedroom. _See you later, alligator. You wish, jellyfish._

It's a trite cliché; the strong and tightly wound woman coming apart in an ugly mess, but it's not entirely untrue, he thinks as he watches her enter her car. She's stiff, sore, and he knows they're nowhere near there yet. Last night was a trial run.

His forgiveness, yes - she has that, always; it's been a sure thing for a while now. Not so with her own, though. He's not sure when she'll be ready for that.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [tumblr](https://catarinquar.tumblr.com)!


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